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The Power of Checklists

The immense power of simple check-lists for monitoring projects

Surgeons, astronauts, airline pilots and software professionals. What do all these people have in common? Well, for one, all of these professionals are very highly trained – in most cases in takes many years to reach a point where you can practice without supervision.

But even highly trained, experienced professionals can have a bad day, and make the occasional mistake. The problem is, if you’re an astronaut, airline pilot, or surgeon, and you make a mistake, lives can be lost. Software development, perhaps, is somewhat less life-critical, most of the time.

Simple checklists can help reduce human error dramatically. Some reports suggest that surgical checklists introduced by the World Health Organization have helped reduce mortality rates in major surgery by as much as 47%. Neil Armstrong had a checklist printed on the back of his glove (pictured), to ensure he remembered the important things as he made history as the first person to walk on the moon.

So if checklists can save lives, keep aircraft in the air, and help take people to the moon and back, why not utilize them to keep software projects on track, and help maximize the delivery of value, and minimize the risk of project failure?

Checklists help highly trained professionals focus on, and remember, the stuff that is important, and critical to the success of the endeavor they are working on. Unlike traditional process documentation, checklists are, by definition, lean, light and concise, so work well with agile development. The point is that they don’t burden a professional with lots of extra things to remember, or try to be prescriptive about how things are done – experienced professionals can generally be trusted to do the job properly, and make the right decisions when circumstances demand it – a checklist simply acts as an “aide-memoir” so nothing vital is forgotten.

So what does a software project checklist look like? Fortunately, some smart people have already done some work in this area, identifying a core set of checklists that can be applied to any software project, regardless of practices being applied, life-cycle being followed, or the technology or languages being used. They have been particularly effective when used in conjunction with agile approaches such as Scrum. These checklists are available in card form as Alpha State Cards, or as an iOS app.